


The Sum Of Heart And Mind

by lindsey_grissom



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-10
Updated: 2009-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Columns of colour in leather and crepe</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sum Of Heart And Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as a prequel to [Perfect Lie](http://archiveofourown.org/works/100429/chapters/137705) or a short stand-alone.

You look at all the books on the shelf and stop yourself from counting them yet again. They've grown since the last time you did. Three more that weren't there before. Columns of colour in leather and crepe. Embossed with the details others need, but not you.

You know them all better than any book you've ever read. You know that one has a crease straight down the cardboard front, from that one time you sat on it when you still felt the need to hide. Three books in; that one's been re-covered twice, almost a third time before you decided you'd never be a master chef.

There are hearts and a name you remember but don't know, inside the back cover of the twelfth. He was the first of your Prince Charmings. One of the only to be left untarnished by the brush strokes of time and wisdom.

Tears blur the ink of three pages in the twenty-first, ghosts of themselves and your parents. There's a three month gap following, with a fresh colour and more edge later on.

One through nine have something pink about them, it was a phase you out grew with the first mourning black. The five in the middle are a set, a collection bought in bulk. The sixth is missing but you don't like to think of that; two sets of three reduced to five. A missing year you're not actually missing much at all.

The two after run in lines of red, a concession towards being feminine you grew out of too. There are more hearts in those, not visible, but they're scattered about in your memory of the time and it's almost a loss that they're absent in print. There's a name, mentioned four hundred and twenty-three times in just one of those books. Six hundred and fifty-three times in the next. The last page has been torn out and burnt but the pen pressed so hard there's a copy against the back. It's always seemed fitting. The actions recounted have been torn out of your heart so many times, and still the impression remains.

There's six from different countries, European languages splashed bold across the patent. Outrageous designs in colour almost blinding and you'd reveled in it, in knowing you didn't care if anyone saw you, if they read the words on the tip of your pen. Older than you should have been, you were naive enough to think that would stay the same. It lasted long enough to trick you.

The three newest look out of place; sleek, stylish copies with no uniqueness between them. You hate them nearly as much as you don't.

They're the new you.

The you that worries from behind a desk of wood; solid and heavy. They're emptier than the others. Already thinner they contain pages left blank. For cutouts you insisted, like a scrapbook of your life. You only ever added one. He was in it. You stopped after that, when suddenly he wasn't.

You look at the fourth you hold in your hand, still shiny as though you've yet to break it in. As though you haven't been using it for almost half it's life. You think about how big your handwriting is now, how you made sure there were no lines and how you've begun to use bullet points, charts and diagrams. You think about how it's almost June and you're only a third in.

You slide it back into place beside it's predecessors and it still looks brand new.

You stop yourself from counting them, because you know exactly how many there are and what that means in time. As you turn back to the files that need reviewing and the forms you really should sign before tomorrow's meeting, you make a note in your mind to buy a smaller one next year; maybe then it will take you longer to notice how empty it is.

You're not sure if you mean the diary or your life and your work distracts you before you can actually decide. Which is maybe for the best. The work won't betray you, or leave you or make you feel like you're all isn't enough. The work won't look at you with eyes that pierce and make you think that delving into the words of your past can't hurt you more than living them.

You're safe with work, and you'll find it easier to pretend you love it eventually. Eventually, that's all that will matter. Eventually.

 

**End.**


End file.
